49
Courtney
Blooddriedundermynails, smeared on my skin, clumped in my hair. It wasn’t enough. I wanted to bath in that bastards blood, carve him up slowly, take my time with his torture. Maybe then, he’d understand even a sliver of the pain that rocketed through the red river connected to the other half of my soul.
Barreling into Tyler’s side with a primal scream, I knocked him off Ollie with the sheer force of adrenaline. He rolled onto his stomach, pushing up-
I looped an arm around his neck, clawing the side of his face. He released a roar, stumbling like a beast trying to shake off a lioness. But he couldn’t shake me, my nails gouging his eye.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!”
Digging my fingers in harder-
I wished I’d ripped his whole damn eye out.
Even then, it wouldn’t erase the damage he already inflicted. No vision had come to warn me. I hadn’t gotten one since coming out of the journal. Had I lost that part of me? I didn’t know how to feel about it.
“Courtney, I know you can’t control it, but your anger is making it really difficult to push calm emotions into him,” Miranda said through gritted teeth as she focused her power into Ollie’s chest.
Compulsively, my hands combed through his hair. He’d vomited, passed out from shock, woke up again and blasted Jack off his feet by accident, thinking it was Tyler. All things I could handle.
It was his sobbing that broke me. I didn’t understand true rage until I heard that tortured sound out of my Beautiful Monster.
“I don’t know how to stop it,” I told her. Perspiration dotted her forehead, her skin flushed like she had a fever. She sighed, sitting back and swiping the back of her wrist across her brow.
“Have you heard anything?” she asked, changing the subject.
When Tyler ran off into the preserve, it took Serina and Miranda physically restraining Jack to keep him from hunting him down. He relented until we got Ollie safely to the dorm, then immediately took Buddy and Serina with him to gather a host wildlife to track Tyler.
“The last update said his scent led to a back road. There were tire tracks. Someone was waiting.”
In my lap, Ollie groaned, hand coming up to his head.
“Fuck.”
He hadn’t said anything other than slurred, unintelligible mutterings since I found him, blood pouring from his dimly glowing eyes on the dirt path. An involuntary shudder worked through me, my fingers stilling in his hair.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Like I was tossed out of a moving car head first,” he grumbled. I grabbed the damp, bloodstained washcloth and dabbed his eyes again. He winced, blinking rapidly up at me. His fingers grazed my jaw. “You saved me.”
The ache in the back of my throat returned.
Words hurt. I nodded.
He looked at Miranda. “Thanks,” he murmured.
“You’re still in pain,” she sighed, exhaustion steaming off her like perfume.
He gave her a half-hearted shrug. “Kind of my baseline.”
“How did he-” she stopped short and grimaced.
Ollie sat up with a groan. I smoothed my hands down his back, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck.
He stiffened.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
